This blew. I mean it. How was I supposed to convince the Federal Bureau of Investigation that I don't have psychic powers anymore, when I can't even convince my own peers of it?

"Look, Tisha," I said, aware that not just Tisha was gazing at me hopefully, but also Mark, Jeff Day, Todd Mintz, Roy Hicks, and a veritable Whitman's Sampler of cheerleaders. "I don't … I mean, I can't . . ."

"Please," Tisha whispered. "She's my best friend. How would you like it if your best friend got kidnapped?"

Damn.

Look, it wasn't like I harbored ill feelings toward Heather Montrose. I did, of course, but that wasn't the point. The point was, I was trying to keep a low profile with the whole psychic thing.

But if Tisha was right, then there was a serial killer loose. He might very well have Heather in his clutches, the same way that, a few days earlier, he'd had Amber in his clutches. Could I really sit around and let a girl—even a girl like Heather Montrose, who, after Karen Sue Hankey, was one of my least favorite people—die?

No. No, I could not.

"I don't have ESP anymore," I said, just so that later on, no one would be able to say I'd agreed to any of this. "But I'll give it a try."

Tisha exhaled gustily, as if she'd been holding her breath until I gave my answer.

"Oh, thank you," she cried. "Thank you!"

"Yeah," I said. "Whatever. But look, I need something of hers."

"Something of whose?" Tisha cocked her head, making her look a lot like a bird. A sparrow, maybe, eyeing a worm.

Yeah. That'd be me. I'd be the worm.

"Something of Heather's," I explained, slowly, so she'd be sure to understand. "Do you have a sweater of hers, or something?"

"I have her pompons," Tisha said, and she bounced back toward the car she'd arrived in.

Todd Mintz looked perplexed. "That's really how you find them?" he asked. "By touching something that belongs to the missing person?"

"Yeah," I said. "Well. Sort of."

It wasn't, of course. Because here's the thing: since that day last spring, when I was hit by lightning, I'd found a lot of people, all right. But I'd only found one of them while I'd been awake. Seriously. Everybody else, it had taken sleep to summon their location to, as Douglas had put it, my mind's eye. That's how my particular psychic ability worked. While I slept.

Which meant that, as a future career option, I was going to have to rule out fortune-telling. You were never going to catch me sitting in a tent with a crystal ball and a big old turban on my head. I could no sooner predict the future than I could fly. All I can do—all I've ever been able to do, since the day of that storm—is find missing people.

And I can only do that in my sleep.

Except once. One time, when one of the campers I'd been assigned to watch had run away, I'd hugged his pillow and gotten this weird flash. Really. It was just like a picture inside my head, of exactly where the kid was, and what he was doing.

Whether or not this would happen with the help of Heather's pompons, I had no way of knowing. But I knew that if the same person who'd killed Amber had gotten hold of Heather, we couldn't afford to wait until morning to find her.

"Here." Tisha rushed up to me and shoved two big balls of shimmery silver and white streamers into my hands. "Now find her, quick."

I looked down at the pompons. They were surprisingly heavy. No wonder all the girls on the squad had such cut arm muscles. I'd thought it was from all those cartwheels, but really, it was from hauling these things around.

"Uh, Tisha," I said, aware that every single patron of the Chocolate Moose was looking down at me. "I can't, um … I think maybe I need to go home and try it. How about if I come up with anything, I'll call you and let you know?"

Tisha didn't seem particularly enthused by this idea, but what else could I say? I wasn't going to stand there and inhale the scent of Heather Montrose's pompons. (Which was how I'd found Shane. By smelling his pillow, though, not his pompons.)

Fortunately, Mark, at least, seemed to understand, and, taking me by the elbow, said, "I should be getting you home, anyway."

And so, under the watchful gazes of most of Ernie Pyle High's elite, Mark Leskowski escorted me back to his BMW, tucked me gently into the passenger seat, and then got behind the wheel and drove me slowly home.

Slowly not because he didn't want our evening together to end, but because he was so busy talking, I guess it was hard for him to accelerate at the same time.

"You get what this means, don't you?" he asked as we inched down Second Street. "If Heather really is missing—if the same person who killed Amber really has done the same thing to Heather—well, they can't keep on suspecting me, can they? Because I was with you the whole time. Right? I mean, right? Those FBI people can't say I had anything to do with it."

"Right," I said, looking down at Heather's pompons. Was this going to work? I wondered. I mean, would a lapful of pompons really lead me to a missing girl? It didn't seem very likely, but I closed my eyes, dug my fingers into the feathery strands, and tried to concentrate.

"And before I was with you," Mark was saying, "I was with them. Seriously. I came straight to your house from my interview with them. The FBI guys, I mean. So I never had an opportunity to do anything to Heather. She was all the way out at the quarry, with everybody else. And that waitress. She saw me with you, too."

"Right." It was really hard to concentrate, what with Mark talking so much.

Oh, well, I thought. I'll just wait until I get home, and try it there, in the privacy of my own bedroom. I'll have plenty of opportunity, once I get home.

Only of course I didn't. Because my parents had gotten home before I had, and were waiting for me on the front porch, their expressions on the grim side.

Busted again!

Mark, as he pulled into our driveway, went, "Are those your parents?"

"Yes," I said, gulping. I was so dead.

"They look nice." Mark waved at them as he got out of his car and walked around it to open my door. One thing you had to say about Mark Leskowski: he was a gentleman and all.

"Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Mastriani," he called to them. "I hope you don't mind my taking your daughter out for a quick bite to eat. I tried to have her home promptly, as it's a school night."

Whoa. Didn't Mark realize he was laying it on a little thick? I mean, my parents aren't morons.

My mom and dad just sat there—my mom on the porch swing, my dad on the porch steps—and stared as I emerged from Mark's BMW. I had never seen them looking so worried. That was it. I was dead meat.

"Well, it was very nice to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Mastriani," Mark said. Exercising some of that charm that made him such an effective leader on the ball field, he added, "And may I say that I have enjoyed dining in your restaurants many times? They are particularly fine."

My dad, looking a little astonished, went, "Um, thank you, son."

To me, Mark said, picking up the hand that was not clutching Heather Montrose's pompons, "Thank you, Jessica, for being such a good listener. I really needed that tonight."

He didn't kiss me or anything. He just gave my hand a squeeze, winked, climbed back into his car, and drove away.

Leaving me to face the firing squad alone.

I turned around and squared my shoulders. Really, this was ridiculous. I mean, I am sixteen years old. A grown woman, practically. If I want to punch a girl in the face and then go have a nice dinner with the quarterback of the football team, well, that is my God-given prerogative. . . .

"Mom," I said. "Dad. Listen. I can explain—"

"Jessica," my mother said, getting up from the porch swing. "Where is your brother?"

I blinked at them. The sun had set, and it wasn't easy to see them in the gloom. Still, there wasn't anything wrong with my ears. My mom had just asked me where my brother was. Not where I had been. Where my brother was.

Was it possible that I was not in trouble for going out after all?

"You mean Douglas?" I asked stupidly, because I still could not quite believe my good fortune.

"No," my father said sarcastically. He wasn't worried enough, apparently, to have lost his sense of humor. "Your brother Michael. Of course we mean Douglas. When's the last time you saw him?"

"I don't know," I said. "This morning, I guess."

"Oh, God!" My mother started pacing the length of the porch floor. "I knew it. He's run away. Joe, I'm calling the police."

"He's twenty years old, Toni," my father said. "If he wants to go out, he can go out. There's no law against it."

"But his medicine!" my mom cried. "How do we know he took his medication before he left?"

My dad shrugged. "His doctor says he's been taking it regularly."

"But how do we know he took it today?" My mother pulled open the screen door. "That's it. I'm calling the—"

We all heard it at the same time. Whistling. Someone was coming down Lumley Lane, whistling.

I knew who it was at once, of course. Douglas had always been the best whistler in the family. It was he, in fact, who'd taught me to do it. I could still only manage a few folk songs, but Douglas could whistle whole symphony pieces, without even seeming to pause for breath.

When he emerged into the circle of light thrown by the porch lamp, which my mother had hastily turned on, he stopped, and blinked a few times. From one of his hands dangled a bag from the comic book store downtown.

"Hey," he said, looking at us. "What's this? Family meeting? And you started without me?"

My mother just stood there, sputtering. My dad heaved a sigh and got up.